Lost Holiday

This film looks like it was made with the disposable version of movie cameras or maybe it's just a 1.2 megapixel video recorder, either way the quality is atrocious. The sound doesn't fare much better, it is equally disappointing, and to keep it all in the same spirit, so is the script and the acting. All the positive reviews are probably from people that know the people in the film, but very unlikely to be impartial. Waste of time.

Poorly constructed. Poorly acted. Poorly written. Filled with BS identity politics. The direction is none existent. AND the screen quality looks like this was made on Super8 and blown up for the big screen.

In all it's amateur night. And boring as all hell.

As a artist in my late, late, late fifties...I'm sixty three, I thought this movie was not going to be my nor my wife's kind of movie. It was about younger people in their 20s, millennials if you will, that were still partying their lives away and not giving a damn about what happens on any given evening. Especially when it's the holiday season (in this case, Christmas/New Years) and everyone is back home from where ever they may be coming from, reacquainting themselves with their old friends (for better or worse) and tiptoeing around old lovers and the life partners they are now with. William Jackson Harper did a nice job keeping the tension just under the radar of his watchful wife played by Allie Gallerandi. So, if you want to see a typical "were too old to be partying like this' movie, the first act is totally this! My wife and I were both rolling our eyes at the antics of the characters, 'been there, done that, I don't need to watch a movie about it'. This attitude nearly made us miss the second act turn. We had to play catch up to figure out what was going on. Don't do what we did, just watch the movie and pay attention!

I'm not sure I want to say much more about the sequence of events from this point. Let's just say, it becomes a whole lot more interesting and is totally worth the time it takes to watch the movie.

Kate Lyn Sheil provides a strong female lead that has a vulnerability that draws you in, but also the strength to take control of a situation when it's called for. A nice solid support from Thomas Matthews as sidekick / comic relief, never lets the movie drag or get too over-the-top with gags. Since he co-wrote and co-directed this film along with his brother, Michael Matthews, I assume this was by design, so bravo to you both.

Shot on 16mm film, (yep, the kind you have to develop) it has a classic look of a sixties exploitation film and I think this could even become one of those cult like films you sit down and watch now and then for the performances and the retro look of the film.

I know it's going to be a streaming film and there are a lot of platforms that are going to carry it. Find it on your favorite and make an evening of it. Maybe take some 'shrooms, pop some corn and crack a beer.

So the 10 & 9 star reviews have to be written by people involved with the movie (or they asked people to create positive reviews). Cause this "movie" (you can't really call it a movie) is entirely stupid and bad. It is extremely pretentious of these "filmmakers" and "actors" to expect anyone to actually like it.

If there's a way to make privileged, glammy young drug abusers sympathetic, this decidedly isn't it. Callous, cynical, narcissistic, not nearly as funny as they think they are, dangerously irresponsible and determinedly wasting everything they've been given in life, they're more like minor a-hole antagonists we might encounter in the story of someone actually relatable.

Putting them centre-stage makes for a very strange viewing experience. Was the writer doing a sort of self-portrait, imagining in his own druggy delirium that we'd fancy them as much as he does himself? Feels like it.

One can only hope that, if this was the case, with the movie done, it held up a reflection to him he finally couldn't ignore, partly just because and party because there is at least a little potential here. True, the story isn't really about much thematically and the primary motivation for the two leads to embark on solving a mystery rather than going to the cops is pathetically weak and could have been stronger, but what follows is fairly well constructed and, with slightly different characters engaged in these shenanigans, could even be amusing.

As someone who's spent some time in DC and its suburban Virginian environs, I also just enjoyed seeing the area on film. And, unlike some reviewers here, I really liked the low-budget indie look of the thing.